As Shelby Ch’ng left her Victoria Avenue business with her husband Wednesday she saw a large crowd of people gathered on May Street.
“The police just arrived. I did see a man lying on the ground. People were around him. Another woman was very upset,” said the owner and operator of Unveiled Bridal Boutique.
“A lot of people came out of their businesses and off the street and kind of congregated in that area, trying to figure out what happened.”
Police were called to May Street between Violet Street and Victoria Avenue around 5:20 p.m. Wednesday where 30-year-old Travis Cutfeet had been allegedly stabbed to death.
While the circumstances surrounding the death are still under investigation, it is said that Cutfeet was walking down May Street and appeared to have been stabbed.
Police arrested 35-year-old Shawn Henderson a few hours later without incident. Henderson has been charged with second-degree murder.
Ch’ng thinks incidents like Wednesday’s homicide investigation give the city’s south downtown area a bad reputation.
But she adds that she doesn’t feel unsafe coming to work every day.
“I think everybody needs to take precautions no matter what area of town you live in,” she said, adding she grew up in the south side, specifically the East End.
“It feels like home. It doesn’t feel unsafe,” she said.
She would have been more worried Wednesday if she hadn’t seen a large crowd gathered around the crime scene.
“This is not an everyday occurrence,” Ch’ng said.
Ch’ng thinks not physically cleaning up the streets does more damage to the neighbourhood’s reputation than a murder.
“I think when you hear a murder (happened) and you drive by the area quickly, see all the garbage on the ground, broken windows, graffiti – I think that image does more than a single murder,” she said.
Debra Baker is worried the incident could be a setback for the area’s businesses, but she also feels safe operating a business in the south core.
“We have never seen anything like this happen. It’s really sad,” said the owner of Baci Boutique.
A murder on one of the busiest city streets in broad daylight doesn’t deter Baker from locating her business just around the corner.
“This could happen anywhere in the city. We’re trying to build up the area so that kind of doesn’t look good for the area right now but this place is as safe as the Bay Street area, downtown Port Arthur area,” Baker said.
Baker said she heard what happened when her last customer of the day came into the store.
“She apparently was the one who called 911 because she was standing on the corner and she heard somebody screaming,” she said, adding that she feels safe because of the police presence in the neighbourhood, which includes officers on foot patrol.
“They’re always in every day checking on us. If we have any concerns we know where to go,” she said.
Steepers the Tea People owner Pat Ramirez is also pleased to see the police in the area so often, but she thinks they could do more.
“They’re very good. There’s foot patrol, cars pass by but there does need to be a stronger presence,” she said, adding her attitude about the area hasn’t changed after the May Street homicide.
“It doesn’t change my comfort level as much as saddened that it happened,” she said.
Cutfeet died at the scene and Thunder Bay Police Service executive officer Chris Adams said the investigation was intense initially.
“This was an incident that occurred in a very public location. Through a lot of legwork on the ground, our officers were able to make an arrest a few hours later,” he said.
Henderson was arrested in a residence in the 1000 block of East Victoria Avenue around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday evening.
The victim and the accused were known to each other and Adams said whether or not there was much motivation or planning in the incident is still under investigation.
“It was an unusual time of day, broad daylight, very busy street at that time of day,” he said.
But that public setting also helped police.
“There were a number of people in that area at the time. The more eyes that are available to police to follow up with are better,” Adams said.
